the funniest thing in the entire pirates of the caribbean series is definitely that one scene in At World’s End where they have parlay but davy jones is part of it, and rather than have him stand in the shallows or something they get a big bucket of water and have in stand on it on shore

who thought of that idea? who thought “put davy jones in a bucket of water” and had the guts to suggest it aloud? and then who went “hey that sounds like a great idea!”

at some point someone told davy jones their idea was for him to stand in a bucket of water and he agreed to it

*stands majestically in a bucket*

ok but notice the trail of buckets behind him meaning he walked from the ocean through three other buckets of water before he got into the one hes standing in

It’s even funnier when you consider how he must have figured all this out in the first place.

Some folks are asking “well, if he can avoid the no-dry-land curse simply by standing in a bucket, doesn’t that ruin his whole motivation?”, but he’s not on dry land here.

The parley takes place on a sandbar – which, for the unfamiliar, is a temporary “island” of sand deposited by breaking waves, unconnected with the shore, that spends most of its time submerged, being exposed only at low tide.

What Jones is doing here is rules-lawyering his curse. Can you imagine the trial and error he must have gone through in order to determine that this would actually work?

“Okay, do islands count as dry land? How about parts of the shore below the high tide mark? Reefs? Shoals? What if I stand in a pool of water on a shoal? Does it have to be seawater, or will any water do? Does it have to be a natural tidepool, or can it be something artificial, like a bucket?”

What I am saying is that there must have been a process.

Pretty sure that this implies that the reverse – a bucket of sand, floating on the water (big bucket with just a bit of sand), would qualify as dry land. That’s absurd, so I’m pretty sure that his lawyer pulled a fast one over the curse governor.

It may be absurd, but the text of the film bears it out. Davy Jones can sense the presence of his heart while it’s at sea, but not while it’s on land (indeed, that’s why he buried it on land in the first place: to break his connection with it) – yet placing the heart in a simple jar of dirt conceals it from Jones’ awareness just as surely as burial on land does, even if the jar is on a boat at the time. Suitably prepared vessels filled with dirt absolutely count as dry land for the purpose of Jones’ curse.

Then the reverse should also be true. If he buried it in a jar of water, no matter how far inland it is, he would be able to sense it. So by this logic, any container of seawater counts as not dry land, ergo, the bucket is a perfectly viable loophole.

Not necessarily. It’s traditionally a lot easier to accidentally get whammied by a curse than it is to weasel around it – I figure that’s why he’s using multiple layers of indirection here. He’s forbidden to set foot on dry land, but it’s technically not dry land (it’s a sandbar, a non-permanent landform exposed only at low tide) and he technically didn’t set foot on it (he’s standing in a bucket of water). It’s entirely possible that either one of those things alone wouldn’t make the grade.

okay but this all raises one further, very important question: if it’s specifically “dry land” he’s forbidden from, what about wetlands.

can Davy Jones fight you in salt marshes? can he throw down in a peat bog?Swamp Battle?

This is the quality content I come to Tumblr for.

could he step on land if his shoes are wet?

No matter how ridiculous PotC gets I will love it. Especially when it results in conversations like this

What if he crawls around on his hands and knees, with his feet raised slightly into the air? Can he walk on his hands? Can he ride around in a litter or a wheelchair?

can he be in a wheelbarrow?

What if he flies over dry land? Like in a hot air balloon, or in the claws of a giant bird?

What if he’s carried by two swallows using a strand of creeper?

European swallows or African swallows?

this whole thread reads like a conversation between these two:

In fact im not entirely sure that it wasn’t their idea in the first place